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_Current Cites_
Volume 6, no. 12
December 1995
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1995/cc95.6.12.html
Contributors:
Campbell Crabtree, John Ober, Margaret Phillips,
David Rez, Richard Rinehart, Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
Electronic Publishing
Bank, David. "The Java Saga" WIRED 3.12 (December 1995):
166-169, 238-246. -- A fairly detailed description of the
five year development of Sun Microsystem's object-oriented
programming language, Java. Growing out of a project to
build a 'simple computer for normal people' to control
everyday appliances, Java, originally known as Oak, is now
poised to become the "DOS of the Internet." After unsuccessful
bids for interactive TV and CD-ROM development deals in 1993,
Java seems to have found its niche in the Internet. Java is
platform-independent and secure, enabling a distributed
computing environment that Sun hopes can challenge the software
monopoly currently held by Microsoft. Sun is giving away Java
and the HotJava browser and licensing it to huge players like
Netscape hoping to make Java the standard before competing
technologies (most notably, Microsoft's Blackbird) arrive on
the scene. [Note: On Dec. 7, Microsoft announced its intent to
license Java] -- CJC
Stowe, David W. "Just Do It: How to Beat the Copyright Racket"
Lingua Franca 6(9) (November/December 1995):32-42. -- If one
can call an article on copyright "entertaining" then it is
an adjective that I will apply to this one. Stowe's irreverent
writing style and copyright permission anecdotes make this an
engaging as well as informative read. But if you are looking
for permission to put up electronic copies of articles, don't
look here for it. He's talking about scholars quoting
(reasonably, not wholesale) from published works in their own
academic publications. -- RT
Networks and Networking
Atkins, Robert. "The Art World & I Go Online" Art in America
83(12) December 1995: 58-65, 109. -- The author offers a guide
to international art resources in digital media. The guide is
also an analysis of different media employed to deliver art
information (or in some cases native digital art itself), as
well as evaluation of content. Many specific sites and
projects are mentioned to allow follow up on the reading with
the reader's own tour through the cyber galleries of cultural
heritage information. -- RR
Cortese, Amy. "The Software Revolution" Business Week
(December 4, 1995):78-90.
[http://www.businessweek.com/week49/bw49toc.htm] --
If this cover story is to be believed, the future of
software will be program components delivered on demand
to stripped-down PCs connected to the Internet. The
technologies that are promising this future include Sun
Microsystem's Java computer language and Netscape's
Navigator Web client. Those who stand to win in this
scenario include small developers and software houses who
are unable to break the hold that Microsoft has on the
market. Those presumed to lose big include Microsoft, which
has any number of individuals and smaller corporations
ecstatic over Java's possibilities. No matter what happens
to Java, it seems apparent that there is a sea change toward
a different software paradigm -- one that the industry has
been moving toward with the development of such things as
OpenDoc (Apple sponsored) and OLE (Microsoft). But the
Internet may be poised to deliver that paradigm (applet by
applet) in a manner unpredicted by most and feared by some.
-- RT
Courtois, Martin P., William M. Baer, and Marcella Stark,
"Cool Tools for Searching the Web" ONLINE 19(6) (November/
December 1995):15-32. -- One of the most difficult choices
facing a user of the World Wide Web is which search tool
to use from among the couple dozen that are available.
Although hampered by the long publishing cycle of print
publications (the article lacks information on Inktomi and
Excite, both recently released search tools), this is an
excellent and thorough review of seven Web search tools.
Besides the handy chart of features, the authors provide
some excellent sidebars (including one on sites that offer
"one-stop" searching of multiple tools) in addition to the
descriptive text. Anyone wanting to know more about the
different Web search options would do well to sit down
with this article and their favorite Web client. The URLs
alone are well worth tracking down this article. -- RT
Optical Disc Technology
Beiser, Karl. "Getting From There to Here: Remote Access
in the Internet Era" ONLINE 19(6)(November/December 1995):
105-108. -- Speaking from personal experience as the
coordinator of a statewide CD-ROM union catalog project,
Beiser outlines various problems and strategies related
to providing remote access to DOS CD-ROM products over a
TCP/IP wide area network connection. Among the options
considered: EA/2+OS/2, TSX-BBS, Linux with DOS, UNIX+BBS,
Major BBS, and BBSnet. -- TR
Notess, Greg R. "Using CD-ROMs with the Internet" ONLINE
19(6) (November/December 1995):40-44. -- Notess explores
two ways CD-ROM can be used in conjunction with the
Internet for information prospecting: 1) a CD-ROM can
accompany a book with any in-text URLs, and 2) a CD-ROM
can be used to store a major Internet index and search
engine. In regard to the former, readers have the best of
both worlds. They can "curl up in their favorite chair to
read about interesting sites on the Internet, but when it
is time to get on the Net, they can pop the CD-ROM in its
drive and jump easily to the actual sites described in
book." The most popular Internet index and search engine
on CD-ROM is the SuperHighway Access CyberSearch CD-ROM
which combines the small Lycos database of Internet
resources and Frontier's SuperHighway Access Web browser.
The upshot of the CD-ROM over the online version is there
are no lines, no wait or unexpected network crashes. Of
course the major drawback to both of these innovative
online/CD-ROM hybrids is update frequency. Unless they
are updated regularly, the information fast becomes
obsolete, rendering the discs useless. -- TR
General
"Constant Craving" The Economist (November 11, 1995): 81-82,
94. -- This article, in the Science and Technology section,
addresses recent research in mass storage and long-term
storage of information. Especially with digital information,
formats and strategies for long-term information storage &
preservation of substantive amounts of data plague information
specialists. There are many ways to tackle the problem: talk
about mechanisms for refreshing data periodically, software
based solutions such as SGML for certain information formats,
and hardware storage solutions that are stable. This article
covers the latter, with formats from multi-layered information
in semi-transparent cubes read by laser, to micro-etched metal
which does not even require a computer or software, just a
powerful magnifier. -- RR
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Current Cites 6(12) (December 1995) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1995 by the Library, University of
California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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trinne@library.berkeley.edu // (510)642-8173
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